Reaching high school seniors on social media isn't as easy as one might think. First, you have to attract a following, then you have to appeal to their interests. I quickly found that Facebook is not popular among 16-18 year olds. I could still reach my wedding clients through Facebook, but the 16-18 year old crowd had gravitated elsewhere. Why? Their parents are now on Facebook and they want to keep their privacy. This age group is using other forms of social media; one of the most popular, Instagram.
Signing up for an account and posting images won’t bring you a senior following. You have to be strategic; this crowd will get annoyed easily. You have to make them want to follow you. Through trial and error and interviewing dozens of kids this age, I came up with a list that has helped me transform my account and grow my following. The bottom line, post what 16-18 year olds want to see. Create an account that is appealing and attractive to them. Show pictures of their friends and create photo-shoots to inspire them. Don't forget to include photos of yourself every now and then, they also want to see you in action and get an idea of your personality.
Are you using your Instagram account for personal or business? I have found it is best to separate. If you are posting dozens of pictures of your kids and family life this age group won’t relate. Yes, I do still post some personal photos, but not as often as I post my work or behind the scenes of my latest shoots. Most of my images are from my professional portfolio, very few are iPhone photos. I am a wedding and senior photographer, so if you visit my account you will see both types of images. Luckily, senior girls (my target audience) like to look at wedding photos so I have been able to market to both clients through my account. Be careful about posting other types of images. If they don't relate then they will not continue to follow you.
Don’t over-post! This age group is temperamental and you will annoy them quickly. I find the best response when posting once a day. I want to stay in front of them, but not clog up their newsfeeds. Posting a dozen images at one time is grounds for a un-follow. You will also find your images will have more likes/comments when you only post one. I suggest keeping the advertisements to a minimum. They don’t want to see your deals, specials, and other advertising every day. They just want to see pictures. If they feel like they are constantly being marketed too on your account they will un-follow you. Seniors normally don't care about saving money, their parents do. That type of post would be better suited for Facebook or a type of media that their parents would see.
Posting professional work, behind the scenes, and other related photos will make your account interesting to this age. Clients in hair and make-up, outfit samples, shopping, images of you shooting, traveling, location scouting, etc are all interesting to that age group. Make sure when post iPhone photos they are good. Don’t post underexposed or horribly processed photos on your account. Even with non-professional work every image represents you. Make sure you stay active, posting one image a month will show you aren't very interested in that account. Seniors will be less likely to follow you if they believe you aren't using your account often.
Great write up Lindsey, I agree on all of it. You are an amazing photographer. I followed you on instagram. I am k_a_chuba.
First of all don't consider this an advertising or spam as the previous comment from ashley woods. I'm trying to be helpful=) There's a quite new, very efficient way to manage your account, especially when it's linked to your business - fast-unfollow.com. When you add a large amount of users, some them won't follow you back anyway, we all know that from twitter. So you have to unfollow unnecessary ones and keep those who liked you. If it's a business scale than it's usually impossible to accomplish manually. That's why you need this service: it supports up to 5000 unsubscriptions per day, which is a unique result for such features. There's also a free "trial" - you can unfollow 1000 people for free. With it I managed to increase the amounts of followers significantly, preserving high level of user engagement. In the case of seniors it may be even more helpful as they're always up to start a fight and commit angry mass unfollows.
Thank you a lot for this article. You are smart) Honestly, nobody cares to be strategic, except you. Any number of people can't puzzle out problems of promoting. Probably no one thinks outside the box. Anyway, there a loads of apps, which find potentially interested users via hashtags, geographic location and competitors, e.g. zengram.net I think it also can solve the noticed problem